Tradecom project

The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has said the capacity of its personnel is now enhanced, and by extension the agency itself, to design specific sectoral strategies based on Ghana’s priority product sectors to assist Ghanaian exporters take advantage of market opportunities.

In concrete terms, the GEPA has been able to prepare and test methodologies for conducting sales missions in targeted markets for the benefit of Ghanaian exporters.

The above are the results of the Tradecom Capacity Building Project for the GEPA, initiated in January 2012 and aimed at ensuring that the authority has the requisite expertise to prosecute the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s (MOTI) agenda of increasing Non-Traditional Exports (NTE) revenue to US$5 billion by 2016. 

The project was also to enhance the GEPA’s preparedness to implement a major policy of MOTI, the National Export Strategy (NES), for the NTE sector, which will be launched soon.     

In a speech read on behalf of the Chief Executive of the GEPA, by Mr. Alexander Dadzawa, Head of Projects at GEPA, at a validation workshop in Accra, he said the authority was unable to achieve all outcomes it has envisaged in the design of the project due to two main shortfalls.

Firstly, he said the Tradecom Facility was unable to field all the four external project partners and so the original terms of reference of the project was modified. Secondly, the period for the implementation of the project was shortened from the original six months to just three and a half months, mainly because the facility was coming to an end.

“The resultant effect of these challenges was that a lot of the activities envisaged under the project could not be implemented at all or had to be rushed.”

He expressed appreciation to Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the President of the ACP-EU Group based in Brussels and European Commission for funding support, AFC International Consultants of Germany and the beneficiary companies who bought into the project idea.

During the Tradecom Project, GEPA tested new methodologies and mechanisms such as individual sales missions to the two key targeted markets of the European Union (EU) and ECOWAS in favour of Ghanaian exporters of non-traditional products.

The mission to Germany in February this year, including eight exporters focused on the export of the fresh and dried fruits, spices, medicinal plants and coffee. Each had about 10 meetings with German importers.                                                                                                                                         

Eight exporters of wooden furniture, aluminium household utensils and roofing sheets joined the mission to Liberia and Mali (ECOWAS) in March 2012, during which each exporter had more than 10 individual meetings with potential importers.

In a remark, Ms Daria Fane from the Delegation of the EU to Ghana explained the EU provides support through EU-ACP programme such as the Tradecom Project to provide trade assistance to developing countries.

She announced the budget for the Tradecom facility which has been ongoing since 2005 has been increased from 50 million Euros to 60 million Euros. She hoped the results would contribute to the broad objectives of strengthening the capacity of the GEPA in the area of market access.

The Deputy Director, Research and Information at GEPA, Mr. Maxwell Osei-Kusi said due to the success of the two sales missions, which has been confirmed by participants, the GEPA will deploy this tool increasingly in its market entry activities with a view to assisting the exporters in obtaining more orders for their products.